Corporator’s name-sis: Dead woman walking?

MUMBAI: What’s in a name? A lot, especially if it identifies a municipal corporator elected from a seat reserved for women belonging to the other backward classes category.
By now, Puja Shah—along with her electorate and her opponents— has probably realised how wrong the bard was. Names do make a difference. Ms Shah was recently disqualified as the corporator from Borivli (East) because she submitted an allegedly fake caste certificate —issued in the name of Taruna Bhandari—to contest the 2001 election.
The 28-year-old, who had won on a Congress ticket, insists that her maiden name was Taruna Bhandari. She said that she had changed it—“as is commonly done’’—after marrying a businessman, Manish Shah, in 1994.
However, she has refused to give any details about her husband or her father, who, she insisted, would vouch for her. “He retired as a peon from M.K. High School, Borivli,’’ is all that she was willing to say.
“I have married a person from a higher caste, but I am an OBC by birth,’’ she claimed. However, the BMC’s caste verification committee said that the certificate she had submitted actually belonged to a Borivli resident, Taruna Bhandari, who had died in a railway accident in 1983.
It was issued by the Jetabhai Jadhavji Primary School in Borivli (East). But Ms Shah alleged that the committee was being influenced by her political rivals.
The authenticity of Ms Shah’s caste certificate had been challenged soon after the elections by Neela Soni, the BJP candidate who lost by more than 3,000 votes.
People close to Ms Soni said that they had in their possession the death certificate of the “real’’ Taruna Bhandari.
“She had died when she was just eight years old,’’ they said. But Ms Shah claimed that the death certificate was bogus.
“There are no records with the police or with the coroner regarding any rail accident in 1983 in which an eight-year-old by the name of Taruna Bhandari was involved,’’ she said, adding that she would challenge the disqualification in the court.